(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to part two of our interview with Mr. Amos Wilson, author of, "The Developmental Psychology of the Black Child."

Mr. Wilson, in part one you said that the Black man's, the Black woman's goal of equality with the white man is a low goal.

Would you expound on that (indistinct), please.

- Particularly when equality is equated with sameness, the idea of being equal as being almost nondistinguishable from the whites or the so-called European.

Because when I look at the kind of world that the European has made, I see equally sharing that world with him or expanding it and not changing it is meant to a degree, meaning equally spreading the misery that's current at this point.

We see, for instance, we look at European leadership today, we see European leadership, for instance, that's incapable or seemingly incapable of maintaining peace.

That seems to be almost definitely headed for a third world war.

A European system wherein you have enough weaponry now to destroy the earth and to kill people, or they say several times over as if people could die more than once.

A leadership that has polluted the world and threatens to destroy the ecosystem of the world.

A leadership that still maintains vast amounts of discrimination, exploitation of other people, as such.

I then cannot see that sharing that kind of world with them as a goal for Black people.

As a matter of fact, we must bring a world that is superior to the current one, and I think Black people as well as other people should be concerned about bringing onto the world stage a civilization that is superior to the ones that the Europeans have set here.

Or else, we will just rush it further into the destructive direction in which is going.

We see a European society now, for instance, that is confused in terms of its values.

Not only then are Black people suffering in a sense... - [Interviewer] Why you say it's confused?

- Well, we look at the American system today where religion, for instance, no longer has much authority in the direction of people's lives, and apparently the law is having less and less direction in people's lives, to such a degree that everybody's gotten into the me generation business as if we are gonna only be able to survive and maintain ourselves in this world by contemplating our navels, or getting in through ourselves, or getting into self-awareness as if the maintenance of orderly productive human relations is not important, you see?

And yet, we cannot each do our own thing totally, as such that leads to chaos as well.

But this kind of me orientation that we find, this type of narcissism that is quite apparent in this country as well as other European countries, you see to me indicates a situation where people now have lost a sense of direction as well as this inability to say, for instance, stop going in a direction that is obviously self-destructive.

You got a situation here for instance in the United States where you have enough weaponry to destroy everyone and yet the military budget grows and grows by leaps and bounds.

And the same thing with the Russian situation that side.

- In connection with that, you said something earlier before the program.

You talked about the, what you perceive to be the real purpose of the neutron bombing.

We wanna get back to the Black child thing, but would you touch on that please?

- Yes, this sort of goes over an area I think that we as Blacks should discuss more and more.

While civil rights is, of course very important to us as a central issue in our lives, I think by stressing it, we have sort of overlooked many of the other things that are going on in the world.

Of course, this has been in part built by our culture too, in the sense that whites only invite Blacks to programs and other things between civil rights seems to be the thing to be talked about.

We are often misled by the media.

As a matter of fact, the media is used to hypnotize Black people and to maintain Black people in the state of hypnosis.

And it does this by deceiving them and by focusing their attention in non-essential areas.

For instance, my reading of the so-called neutron bomb, this Bomb that supposedly leaves things standing.

I think the projection of the American news establishment has been that this bomb was essentially developed to deal with the Russians, particularly to deal with Western European defense as against the Eastern European armies attacking them.

But I think another aspect that has been overlooked was that the aspect that the bomb was essentially developed to deal with third world nations.

For instance, to bomb the Middle East and leave the oil wells standing.

And not too much to stress the imagination, to see the bombing of African peoples and leaving the resources available for exploitation, as such.

And I think we as a people should think about these possibilities- - Now some people- - And we should look beyond media programs that seek to focus our interest in another direction completely to our own disadvantage.

For instance, I think if we look at the so-called Columbia Program, the Columbia Space Craft, we get, again, these news media gives us this hype, about whether they'll get up and come down safely and so forth.

But the actual military implications of that for third world peoples, and the implications of how that helps to maintain the domination of the European over us, of course is not looked into.

How is that system being used, for instance, to put up military satellites, and to develop laser weapons, and other things that will be used, for instance to blackmail third world nations?

But beside that, how is it used in the communications network so that nations and African nations for instance, and other nations of the world will be flooded by English oriented program, European oriented programs?

Again, maintaining the European position and educating our people in the European position.

- [Interviewer] Is it any accident that no Black man has gone to the moon, et cetera?

- Certainly, I don't think it's an accident, of course, I think it's just a further of extension of keeping Black people or non-white people out of very important programs as well.

However, I think, other than Blacks getting into these programs, which I think is a laudable goal to a degree, of course we may be about developing our own.

I think this is one of our major problems in that we as people do not think about doing these kinds of things on our...

I'd like to see, say those ships taking off from the continent of Africa run by Africans as such, but we as Black people have to begin to imagine that being the case.

- And Black men have helped to develop this country's space program.

- Yes, definitely.

The unfortunate part about it is, we don't transfer a lot of the knowledge that we've gained from working with this country to our own people.

And I think this is the crucial position of Black men and Black women in this country, is to transfer knowledge and information gained to our own African countries and our own people of color, the world over.

For defensive purposes as well as possibly for our offensive ones, or for entering into other worlds as such.

- Okay, I wanna, go ahead.

- The other thing is, you see, I don't think it would be enough, for instance, for a Black child merely to dream of being on the spaceship with white astronauts, or to dream of being a part of a program for, to me that helps maintain the servant mentality that is too prevalent in the Black community.

We are just an extra, or we are taken along as an extra, as such.

I am looking forward to Black men being the masters of space, let us say, being in control of space, let us say.

So it won't be enough to just ride along and be along.

We must have our own space program.

We must explore our moons and the other sides of the world.

Because it is only out of mastery and the desire for mastery and what may be a very bad word, the desire for power, that mental growth takes place, you see?

To opt for equality as we've done too much does not put enough of emphasis on mastery of ourselves, and our destiny, and so forth.

- You said in a previous conversation that there's a difference when you see a child who's going to school to master something, to become a master that is, as opposed to becoming a servant, what is the difference in the child?

- The major difference is on how he interacts with the information that is being developed in the classroom, and how he perceives that information, and how he's gonna use that information.

To a good extent, a person who's not headed for mastery, let us say, essentially is interested in learning what as against how, you see?

And to a great extent then his approach to knowledge is passive, and he becomes more interested in memorizing and remembering what is told him.

And he's learning more to take orders than he is to give orders, you see?

And to a great extent, many of our so-called educated Blacks our very highly educated Blacks have still been educated in that mode.

So, and unfortunate many of us go to school to get a job for instance.

We don't perceive it as a part of a massive effort to attain control and mastery of our situation, and ultimately to outdo the European.

You see, one of the major problem we have as a people is, and one of the major function, let say of Eurocentric psychology, and sociology, and history, and so forth, has been to convince none-white people of the invincibility of white people.

To convince us that the white man is not capable of being defeated.

That he cannot assume his minority position in the world as he is.

This being the case then, and it has made us then think, well, we have to accommodate him, we have to get along with him.

Oh, you know, we have to live with them because they are in control and so forth.

Well, that leads to a type of attitude toward learning.

That means that you are not gonna try to outlearn him, outthink him, outmaneuver him, you see?

So if you're going for mastery, then the knowledge becomes very important and you see it as a tool for advancing your own power interest in the world.

If you're not going for mastery, you just see it as a means of being able to carry out efficiently the orders that are handed down.

It also limits creativity because if we are to defeat the European, if we are to master this earth and take back this earth from the European, then we must outthink the European, we must then be creative.

That puts the learning emphasis on the howness, the how to think, as such, and to the use of knowledge as a tool of mastery.

It's a very different kind of thing, very different emphasis there.

- Let me ask you this, back flipping some, we talked earlier about the fact that in the 60, go ahead.

- Pardon me, I sometimes I wanna get down a little more practical implication of what this means.

As a result of the control and the paternalism of Europeans over Black people.

You see, the thing that we must recognize, even if the European becomes good, and nice, and accepts us, and so forth, the fact that he would still be in control creates a, what we might call a benevolent paternalism, which still to a degree helps to maintain this passive mode of thinking and this passive mode of knowledge.

Now when you get into the classroom, you see a child then that wants to be told what the answers are instead of how the answer can be attained.

For instance, sometimes I give in my class, I give an exam and we are looking the at the results of the exam, and the first question you would get sometimes is, "Well, what is the answer to so, and so, and so, and so?"

And I had to say, "Look, you must find that answer yourself, and dig it get up."

The emphasis is quite often then on memorizing the answer.

So therefore reasoning as a tool for finding the answer is thrown out as such.

And the child then is handicapped in that, if he has not memorized the answer, then he fails the exam because he either knows the answer or does not know the answer.

You get what we call one shot thinking, you see?

I'll shoot and guess at the answer.

Quite often it gets into a kind of thinking that depends upon personal feelings.

Often I find in my classroom, which is predominantly Black, sometimes that I have to get the students to separate personal feelings and hunches from dealing with a problem as a problem, as a problem that is susceptible to reason, not as a problem that has an emotional attachment to it as such.

But you see, when you remove reason, and sequential thinking, and active attacking of a problem as the mode of approach, then the person is drawn back on memorizing, on guessing, on going with impulses, and on being unsystematic in their approach to knowledge, upon waiting for someone else to give the answer.

So what you see quite often with the Black child in the classroom is somewhat of a miniature reflection of the orientation of Black adults to white people.

For instance, to a great extent, Black people look at Reagan as some kind of white daddy and we see this kind of business, you know, "Please," in a sense, "daddy Reagan don't do this," or, "we're waiting for Daddy Kennedy to come back into the White House?"

And rarely do we hear a discussion about what are we as Black adults going to do to solve our problem, you see?

This is communicated to our children and it's communicated in the way that they too wait for the answer.

- How did we get... - Blacks think that, we've been misled by our leadership, for instance, to think that we can consume our way into equality, and sees equality as an equality of materials.

So if I had the same car as a white person, if I have the same house as a white person, a similar job, then I'm equal.

But you cannot consume yourself into equality.

You must produce yourself into equality.

And you move into equality and beyond by productive thinking because as long as you're consuming knowledge or you're consuming materials, the guy who is giving it to you or selling it to you is producing at the same time, which means that you never catch up with him because he's always two or three steps ahead of you.

To a good extent, many of our students go into schools, college, as well as secondary levels consuming.

And their minds are not being developed to produce, the true means by which they will accomplish equality.

Everything else is sham.

- Just a personal note, when I was going to school, okay?

At an illustrious college in this area, I found many of the European philosophies, concepts, et cetera, to be totally irrelevant to my position in the world.

And in my effort to come up with some kind of Afrocentric view that I was stifled and received your Cs and Ds.

And how does a student, this is the question, how does a student who perceives that maybe Shakespeare, Milton, and these other people do not provide them with the crucial answers that they must find, how should they deal in this kind of environment?

- That's pretty difficult question in the sense of the kind of control that's maintained in the environment.

It sort of leads to what I might call sort of a subterfuge where sometimes you have to produce, as the Bible verse says, "Give unto Caesar what's Caesar's," and at the same time though, develop your own.

Meaning that the Black student quite often is placed in the position of having to regurgitate to his instructors what it is they see as important, while at the same time outside of that sphere, developing his or her own knowledge through his or her own self instruction as such.

The other facet related to that is, I don't know whether we should really depend upon the European oriented university to provide us with our cultural education.

- It's not European, I'm talking about.

- Oh, but but many Black institutions are European- - Oh, okay, yeah, all right.

- Very European oriented- - Go ahead.

- As such, and the problem is, you have in many instances with the so-called many Black professors is the fact that they essentially are representatives of the European point of view.

And the only philosophies and orientation they too have learned have been those philosophies and orientation.

I think it means that quite often then, if the student's job that was begun in the '60s where we established African studies and Black studies program has to be completed.

In the sense where these programs are not just mere electives, are things you do while you have nothing else to do, they should be required, in a sense for Black students.

And they should in a sense be the very first programs that a Black student takes.

- Why is Milton more, why is, say Shakespeare more important than Langston Hughes or James Baldwin?

Why is that?

- Because the European perceives themselves as more important than non-white people, and it justifies their so-called superior position, as such.

And it helps to maintain the, so-called unimportance of non-white white people as such, and views belonging to that category would not be permitted to be elevated there.

It helps to maintain, of course the power relationship as such, and to also build in values in the Black student to value what is not his as being more important, which then focuses his attentions and energies on what is European.

In the sense it helps to maintain what I call, that hypnotized state as such.

See, I don't see them as being valuable in the sense of teaching more or of providing more knowledge.

I see them as a part of the mechanism for maintaining a system of controls, which is maintained not so much by knowledge, but by the refocusing of attention, and by the establishment and building in of values.

It also reduces the revolutionary potential of Black people because you cannot revolt against the people whose values you share, and therefore, it makes the educated Black who, where he educated along Afrocentric lines and along philosophies that were very distinct and different from European philosophy, that would set him up then to actually then rebel against Eurocentric psychology and philosophy as such.

But since he values that philosophy, the only thing that he can ultimately do is seek reformations to reform the systems, which is pretty much where Black leadership has been set now.

It's not a leadership that's seeking to bring about a new world order, for instance.

A world order that's based on say different philosophies, but one that seeks merely to share the material culture of whites.

- We talked a little while ago about, we mentioned Milton and Shakespeare, this touches on something that you talked about earlier that is, the Marva Collins story out of Chicago.

The Black lady who did some miraculous quote, "miraculous thing."

- In the context of this culture, yes.

- Right, with some Black kids, excuse me.

Deal with that if you will.

- Yeah, Marva Collins has become quite a celebrity here lately, particularly as a result of her being on this so-called 60 minutes segment, and as well as a recent drama based on her life.

And, I think deservedly so.

In that she was able through her own educational efforts to elevate the intellectual functioning of Black children who ordinarily would've been consigned to those categories we mentioned in the earlier show, as being learning disabled and unable to read, and move them to such a level that as say as eighth grade students were reading at high school or beyond high school level, that their scores level on various standardized tests were four and five grade levels beyond what they would normally be as such.

And that is somewhat of a miracle in this country when you've been fed the philosophy that Black children cannot learn, and that they are not interested in learning, and they have all of these deficits.

It illustrates in a very practical way that a caring person, a concerned person, or teacher in this instance, can change and revolutionize a child's way of thinking and dealing with the world, and elevating that child's level of thinking.

It has many other things about it too that I think are commendable.

One of the things is that we as Black people can elevate the thinking levels and change the thinking levels of our children in any way we desire if we assume control of their education.

And one of the things that you find constantly and Marva Collins is one of many situations where Black children are reading now three and four grade levels, or doing math three or four grade levels beyond their current grade.

That's merely one story among many.

You go almost into any major urban area now, you can find Black academies that are accomplishing very much the same thing in terms of scoring.

The first thing you find then is, of course that control is necessary, to have control over the learning process.

I think where the internationalists misled us is in thinking that after people have told you that they don't want your children, that they think your children are inferior, that they, I don't think they can learn.

And after we know that these people maintain their position in the world by maintaining us in subjugation, I thought it was somewhat ludicrous that you would expect these people to actually do an adequate job of educating Black children.

And that's a paradox that I find almost stupendous.

And yet we have been led to think this as Black people that all we had to do was throw our children in with white children, and somehow through osmosis or what have you, they would just come out and that has not been the case.

The other thing is, of course, no one will love your children more than you do, and teaching techniques, and educational psychology, and all of that is no substitute for caring, and concern, and belief in one's children.

And the Collins story, the Marva Collins story, you see then the immense value of caring and concern.

One of the things we noticed, for instance, when I studied those programs that have boosted the IQ of Black children and the intellectual function of Black children is that you can get programs of varying technical approaches to teaching, that ultimately it turns out not to be the method of teaching nearly as much as it turns out to be the belief in the children, the expectation that you have regarding the children, the love and concern that you have for the children, and the setting of high standards for those children, and demanding that they meet those standards.

And therefore, once you have these major ingredients, you can almost come in with any kind of technical approach.

- Thank you, we have to come back in part three.

Mr. Amos Wilson, thank you very much.

That's our program, good evening.

- My God, that's... (upbeat music)